Ragtime: A Novel

by E. L. Doctorow

  Morgan listened. He felt that he mustn’t move.

  Well then, Ford continued, I happened to pick up a little book. It was called An Eastern Fakir’s Eternal Wisdom, published by the Franklin Novelty Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And in this book, which cost me just twenty-five cents, I found everything I needed to set my mind at rest. Reincarnation is the only belief I hold, Mr. Morgan. I explain my genius this way—some of us have just lived more times than others. So you see, what you have spent on scholars and traveled around the world to find, I already knew. And I’ll tell you something, in thanks for the eats, I’m going to lend that book to you. Why, you don’t have to fuss with all these Latiny things, he said waving his arm, you don’t have to pick the garbage pails of Europe and build steamboats to sail the Nile just to find out something that you can get in the mail order for two bits!

  The two men stared at each other. Morgan sat back in his chair. The blood drained from his face and his eyes lost their fierce light. When he spoke, it was with the weak voice of an old man. Mr. Ford, he said, if my ideas can survive their attachment to you, they will have met their ultimate test.

  Nevertheless the crucial breakthrough had been made. About a year after this extraordinary meeting Morgan made his trip to Egypt. Although Ford did not go with him he had conceded the possibility of an awesome lineage. And together they had managed to found the most secret and exclusive club in America, The Pyramid, of which they were the only members. It endowed certain researches which persist to this day.

  21

  Of course at this time in our history the images of ancient Egypt were stamped on everyone’s mind. This was due to the discoveries being reported out of the desert by British and American archaeologists. After the football players in their padded canvas knee pants and leather helmets, archaeologists were the glamour personages of the universities. Mummification was described in detail in the Sunday supplements and the funerary concerns of the papyri were analyzed by cub reporters. Egyptian art, its look, was chosen for the interior decoration of homes. Out went the Louis Quatorze and in came the throne chairs with the carved serpent arms. In New Rochelle, Mother was not immune to the fashion, and finding the floral print in the dining room oppressively dull she replaced it with an elegant pattern of sloe-eyed Egyptian males and females in headdresses and short skirts. Colored red ochre, blue and tan, they paraded along the walls in that peculiar frontal way of Egyptians, with vultures on their palms, sheaves of wheat, water lilies and lutes. They were accompanied by lion, scarabs, owl, oxen and dismembered feet. Father, sensitive to every change, found his appetite diminished. It seemed to him inappropriate to entomb oneself in order to dine.

  The boy, however, loved the design and was inspired to study the hieroglyphic alphabet. He abandoned Wild West Weekly for magazines that published tales of violated tombs and the coming to fruition of mummies’ curses. He had become intrigued with the black woman in the attic and in his quiet secret games incorporated her as a Nubian princess now captured for a slave. Unaware, she sat in her room by the window, while he passed her door in a beaked papier-mâché mask of an ibis which he had made himself.

  One afternoon, a Sunday, a new Model T Ford slowly came up the hill and went past the house. The boy, who happened to see it from the porch, ran down the steps and stood on the sidewalk. The driver was looking right and left as if trying to find a particular address; he turned the car around at the corner and came back. Pulling up before the boy, he idled his throttle and beckoned with a gloved hand. He was a Negro. His car shone. The brightwork gleamed. There was a glass windshield and a custom pantasote top. I’m looking for a young woman of color whose name is Sarah, he said. She is said to reside in one of these houses.

  The boy realized he meant the woman in the attic. She’s here. The man switched off the motor, set the brake and jumped down. Then he climbed the stone steps under the two Norwegian maples and walked around the side of the house to the back door.

  When Mother came to the door the colored man was respectful, but there was something disturbingly resolute and self-important in the way he asked her if he could please speak with Sarah. Mother could not judge his age. He was a stocky man with a red-complected shining brown face, high cheekbones and large dark eyes so intense as to suggest they were about to cross. He had a neat moustache. He was dressed in the affectation of wealth to which colored people lent themselves. He wore a fitted black overcoat, a black and white hound’s-tooth suit, gray spats and pointed black shoes. He held in his hand a charcoal-gray cap and driving goggles. She told him to wait and closed the door. She climbed to the third floor. She found the girl Sarah not sitting at the window as she usually did but standing rigidly, hands folded in front of her, and facing the door. Sarah, Mother said, you have a caller. The girl said nothing. Will you come to the kitchen? The girl shook her head. You don’t want to see him? No, ma’am, the girl finally said softly while she looked at the floor. Send him away, please. This was the most she had said in all the months she had lived in the house. Mother went back downstairs and found the fellow not at the back door but in the kitchen where, in the warmth of the corner near the cookstove, Sarah’s baby lay sleeping in his carriage. It was a wicker carriage on four wooden tapered spoke wheels and it had a faded upholstery of blue satin with a plush roll. Her own son had slept in it and her brother before him. The black man was kneeling beside the carriage and staring at the child. Mother, not thinking clearly, was suddenly outraged that he had presumed to come in the door. Sarah is unable to see you, she said, and she held the door open. The colored man took another glance at the child, rose, thanked her and departed. She slammed the door harder than she should have. The baby woke and began to cry. She picked him up, comforting him, astonished by her extreme reaction to the visitor.

  Such was the coming of the colored man in the car to Broadview Avenue. His name was Coalhouse Walker Jr. Beginning with that Sunday he appeared every week, always knocking at the back door, always turning away without complaint upon Sarah’s refusal to see him. Father considered the visits a nuisance and wanted to discourage them. I’ll call the police, he said. Mother laid her hand on his arm. One Sunday the colored man left a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums which in this season had to have cost him a pretty penny. Before she took the flowers up to Sarah, Mother stood at the parlor window. Out on the street the black man dusted his car, cleaned the wheel spokes, the headlamps and the windshield. He glanced up at the third-floor window and drove away. Mother now had cause to remember the expression on the faces of the Ohio seminarians who called on her when she was a girl of seventeen. She said to Father I think what we are witnessing is, in fact, a courtship of the most stubborn Christian kind. Father replied Yes, if you can call a courtship what has already produced a child. I find that an unkind remark, Mother said. There was suffering, and now there is penitence. It’s very grand and I’m sorry for you that you don’t see it.

  The black girl would say nothing about her visitor. They had no idea where she had met him, or how. As far as they knew she had no family nor any friends from the black community in the downtown section of the city. There was a settled society of Negroes there but also, on its margins, a transient element. Apparently she was a transient and had come by herself from New York to work as a servant. Mother was exhilarated by the situation. For the first time since the terrible day she had found the brown baby in the flower bed she saw a reason for hope for the young woman’s future. She began to regret Sarah’s intransigence. She thought of the drive from Harlem, where Coalhouse Walker Jr. lived, and the drive back, and she decided the next time to give him more of a visit. She would serve tea in the parlor. Father questioned the propriety of this. Mother said He is well-spoken and conducts himself as a gentleman. I see nothing wrong with it. When Mr. Roosevelt was in the White House he gave dinner to Booker T. Washington. Surely we can serve tea to Coalhouse Walker Jr.

  And so it happened on the next Sunday that the Negro took tea. Father noted that
he suffered no embarrassment by being in the parlor with a cup and saucer in his hand. On the contrary, he acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The surroundings did not awe him nor was his manner deferential. He was courteous and correct. He told them about himself. He was a professional pianist and was now more or less permanently located in New York, having secured a job with the Jim Europe Clef Club Orchestra, a well-known ensemble that gave regular concerts at the Manhattan Casino on 155th Street and Eighth Avenue. It was important, he said, for a musician to find a place that was permanent, a job that required no traveling. I am through traveling, he said. I am through going on the road. He spoke so fervently that Father realized the message was intended for the woman upstairs. This irritated him. What can you play? he said abruptly. Why don’t you play something for us.

  The black man placed his tea on the tray. He rose, patted his lips with the napkin, placed the napkin beside his cup and went to the piano. He sat on the piano stool and immediately rose and twirled it till the height was to his satisfaction. He sat down again, played a chord and turned to them. This piano is badly in need of a tuning, he said. Father’s face reddened. Oh yes, Mother said, we are terrible about that. The musician turned again to the keyboard. “Wall Street Rag,” he said. Composed by the great Scott Joplin. He began to play. Ill-tuned or not the Aeolian had never made such sounds. Small clear chords hung in the air like flowers. The melodies were like bouquets. There seemed to be no other possibilities for life than those delineated by the music. When the piece was over Coalhouse Walker turned on the stool and found in his audience the entire family, Mother, Father, the boy, Grandfather and Mother’s Younger Brother, who had come down from his room in shirt and suspenders to see who was playing. Of all of them he was the only one who knew ragtime. He had heard it in his nightlife period in New York. He had never expected to hear it in his sister’s home.

  Coalhouse Walker Jr. turned back to the piano and said “The Maple Leaf.” Composed by the great Scott Joplin. The most famous rag of all rang through the air. The pianist sat stiffly at the keyboard, his long dark hands with their pink nails seemingly with no effort producing the clusters of syncopating chords and the thumping octaves. This was a most robust composition, a vigorous music that roused the senses and never stood still a moment. The boy perceived it as light touching various places in space, accumulating in intricate patterns until the entire room was made to glow with its own being. The music filled the stairwell to the third floor where the mute and unforgiving Sarah sat with her hands folded and listened with the door open.

  The piece was brought to a conclusion. Everyone applauded. Mother then introduced Mr. Walker to Grandfather and to Younger Brother, who shook the black man’s hand and said I am pleased to meet you. Coalhouse Walker was solemn. Everyone was standing. There was a silence. Father cleared his throat. Father was not knowledgeable in music. His taste ran to Carrie Jacobs Bond. He thought Negro music had to have smiling and cakewalking. Do you know any coon songs? he said. He did not intend to be rude—coon songs was what they were called. But the pianist responded with a tense shake of the head. Coon songs are made for minstrel shows, he said. White men sing them in blackface. There was another silence. The black man looked at the ceiling. Well, he said, it appears as if Miss Sarah will not be able to receive me. He turned abruptly and walked through the hall to the kitchen. The family followed him. He had left his coat on a chair. He put it on and ignoring them all, he knelt and gazed at the baby asleep in its carriage. After several moments he stood up, said good day and walked out the door.

  The visit impressed everyone except Sarah, who gave no sign of relenting in her refusal to have anything to do with the man. The next week he returned, and the week after that. He was now visiting the family and each time brought them up on the news of his doings of the previous six days, never once assuming anything but their total and consuming interest. Father was put off by the man’s airs. She won’t see him, he told Mother. Am I to go on entertaining Coalhouse Walker every Sunday for the rest of my life? But Mother saw signs of progress. Sarah had taken on the duties of the departed housekeeper and now cleaned rooms so energetically and with such proprietary competence that Mother laughed with the momentary illusion that it was Sarah’s own house she was cleaning. She also began to claim her child at other than feeding time, first taking over his daily bath, then carrying him upstairs to her room at night. Still she would not see her visitor. Coalhouse Walker appeared faithfully through the winter. More than once, when the roads were made impassable by snow, he came on the train and caught the North Avenue streetcar to the bottom of the hill. He wore with his fitted black overcoat a lamb’s-wool hat in the Russian style. He brought outfits for the child. He brought a silver-handled hairbrush for Sarah. Father had to admire his perseverance. He wondered to what extent a musician’s wages could sustain such gifts.

  It occurred to Father one day that Coalhouse Walker Jr. didn’t know he was a Negro. The more he thought about this the more true it seemed. Walker didn’t act or talk like a colored man. He seemed to be able to transform the customary deferences practiced by his race so that they reflected to his own dignity rather than the recipient’s. When he arrived at the back door he gave it a stout rap and when admitted would solemnly greet everyone and somehow convey to them the feeling that they were Sarah’s family, and that his courtesies to them simply measured the regard and respect he held for her. Father recognized certain dangers in the man. Perhaps we shouldn’t encourage his suit, he said to Mother. There is something reckless about him. Even Mathew Henson knew his place.

  By this time, however, the course of events could not be changed. In the late winter Sarah said she would see Coalhouse Walker in the parlor. For days there was a flurry of preparation. Mother gave her one of her own dresses and helped her to take it in. She came downstairs, beautiful and shy. Her hair was combed and pomaded and she sat on the sofa with her eyes lowered as Coalhouse Walker Jr. spoke his formal conversation and played the piano for her. It was only when they were seen together that it became apparent he was a good deal older than she was. Mother insisted that the members of the family excuse themselves so that the courtship could go on in privacy. Nothing was speeded by this. After the visit Sarah looked irritated and even angry. She was slow to forgive, and in some peculiar way her stubbornness seemed the only appropriate response to his persistence. Sarah had attempted to kill her newborn child. Life was not something either of these people took carelessly. They lived in brutal subjection to their hopes and feelings. They suffered themselves. Mother’s Younger Brother understood this perhaps more clearly than anyone in the family. He had spoken to Coalhouse Walker just once but admired him immensely. He saw in the way the black man acted upon his intentions more manhood than he himself possessed. He brooded over this. Younger Brother understood the love in some hearts as a physical tenderness in that part of the body, a flaw in the physiological being equivalent to rickets of the bones or a disposition of the lungs to congest. He was afflicted with this and so was Sarah, colored though she was. He thought she was some displaced African queen; her very awkwardness as she moved suggested that it would be grace in another country. And the more reluctant she seemed to accept Coalhouse Walker’s offer of marriage, the more Younger Brother understood what a terribly afflicted heart she had.

  But one Sunday in March, with the wind blowing softer and small brown buds visible on the branches of the maple trees, Coalhouse arrived in his shining Ford and left the motor idling. Neighbors in their yards came out to watch the strange intense black man, burly and correct, with his dark, dark eyes on the verge of crossing, and the beautifully awkward Sarah, wearing a pink shirtwaist and a black skirt and jacket and one of Mother’s wide-brimmed hats, as they walked under the Norwegian maples and down the concrete steps to the street. She carried her baby. He helped her into the car and got up behind the wheel. They waved to the family and drove off through the suburban streets to the farmlands at the north end of
town. They parked at the side of the road. They watched a cardinal skim the hard brown earth, then beat its way to the highest thinnest branch of a tree. This was the day he asked her to marry and she accepted. The appearance of these magnificent lovers in the family’s life had been startling; the conflict of their wills had exercised an almost hypnotic effect.

  22

  And now Mother’s Younger Brother began again his trips to New York. He would work at his drawing table past the dinner hour and then catch an evening train. He had made friends of some ordnance officers on duty at the armory on Lexington Avenue and 34th Street. They complained about the Springfield rifle. They showed him their small arms and their grenade bombs. He knew immediately that he could design better weapons. He drank with the officers. He became known at the stage doors of several Broadway theatres. He stood in the alleys, like others, never so well-groomed as some of the older men, nor so carelessly handsome as the collegians from Princeton or Yale. But there was an intensity of expectation about his eyes that attracted a fair number of women. He was always so serious and unhappy that they were persuaded he loved them. They took him for a poet.

  Still, his salary couldn’t support these tastes. Broadway was alive with lights and entertainments and everyone connected with the theatre and charged by its excitement lived to the limit. He learned where to find women who would go to bed with him for a modest price. One of these places was the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. They walked in twos whenever the weather was mild. The days were beginning to lengthen. In cold luxurious sunsets they strolled about the fountain, shadows filling the great steps, the water already black, the paving stones brown and pink. He amused them by taking them seriously. He was gentle with them and they didn’t mind his oddity because it was gentle. He would take a woman to his hotel room and then sit in a chair with one shoe in his hand and completely forget about her. Or he would not attempt to make love but only inspect her intimate places. He drank wine until he was insensible. He dined in steakhouses with sawdust on the floor. He went to cellar clubs in Hell’s Kitchen where hoodlums bought everyone drinks. He walked Manhattan at night, his eyes devouring passers-by. He stared in the windows of restaurants and sat in hotel lobbies, his restless eyes picking out motion and color before it defined itself.